Answer the first two questions out loud. Then, blurt out the first thing that comes to mind for question 3.
1. What continent is Kenya in?
2. What are the two opposing colors in the game of chess?
3. Name any animal.
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When asked to name an animal out of the blue, less than 1 percent of people will answer zebra. But roughly 20 percent of people answer zebra to sentence 3, and about 50 percent respond with an animal from Africa.
In other words, by directing your attention to Africa and the colors black and white, it is possible to manipulate your answer. As with comedy routines, this example offers two crucial insights about memory and the human mind that will be recurring themes in this book. First, knowledge is stored in an associative manner: related concepts (zebra/Africa, kilometers/miles) are linked to each other. Second, thinking of one concept somehow "spreads" to other related concepts, making them more likely to be recalled. Together, both these facts explain why thinking of Africa makes it more likely that "zebra" will pop into mind if you are next asked to think of any animal. This unconscious and automatic phenomenon is known as priming. And as one psychologist has put it "priming affects everything we do from the time we wake up until the time we go back to sleep; even then it may affect our dreams."
How can we take advantage of this mind trap?
1. What continent is Kenya in?
2. What are the two opposing colors in the game of chess?
3. Name any animal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When asked to name an animal out of the blue, less than 1 percent of people will answer zebra. But roughly 20 percent of people answer zebra to sentence 3, and about 50 percent respond with an animal from Africa.
In other words, by directing your attention to Africa and the colors black and white, it is possible to manipulate your answer. As with comedy routines, this example offers two crucial insights about memory and the human mind that will be recurring themes in this book. First, knowledge is stored in an associative manner: related concepts (zebra/Africa, kilometers/miles) are linked to each other. Second, thinking of one concept somehow "spreads" to other related concepts, making them more likely to be recalled. Together, both these facts explain why thinking of Africa makes it more likely that "zebra" will pop into mind if you are next asked to think of any animal. This unconscious and automatic phenomenon is known as priming. And as one psychologist has put it "priming affects everything we do from the time we wake up until the time we go back to sleep; even then it may affect our dreams."
How can we take advantage of this mind trap?